1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to content distribution, and more particularly, is suitably applied to a computer network system in which live content provided from a user personal computer (PC) connected to the Internet is distributed to clients via a prescribed streaming server.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a computer network system, as a typical method for providing content created by a user via the Internet, the user opens a homepage.
In the case where the user opens a homepage, the user gets a homepage creation program with the user PC, creates the homepage having hyperlinks to a plurality of content, with the homepage creation program, and stores it in a streaming server of an internet service provider (ISP).
Then, the ISP provides the homepage from the streaming server to client's who have got access via the Internet, and in response to clicking on an anchor on the homepage, it provides the content being linked to the anchor.
In addition, the streaming server stores motion pictures and audio, in addition to still pictures, as content which is uploaded with the user PC, and thereby realizing live distribution by stream-distributing, for example, live content composed of motion pictures to clients via the Internet in response to the clients' requests.
In the computer network system having such configuration, in the case where a circuit connecting a user PC and the Internet can be used for the wide band transmission in broadband, the user PC can perform the parallel transmission of a plurality of content at different transmission rates, to a streaming server, and then the streaming server can perform the multistream distribution to plural clients with its stream distribution function.
However, if the user PC has setting of the number of streams exceeding the number of streams capable of performing the parallel transmission of a plurality of content at different transmission rates from the user PC to the streaming server, the transmission of content needs a wider band than the band of the circuit and therefore the transmission of the content may be interrupted, which causes a problem in that the live distribution can not be reliably performed.